Russian IT giant Yandex announced on October 8 that a fire caused by a drone (UAV) attack occurred at its data center in Sasovo, Ryazan Oblast, leading to the complete shutdown of the facility.
According to Yandex, there were no casualties from the fire, but some of the facility's infrastructure was damaged, and its availability zone "ru-central1-b" was shut down. Access disruptions to transportation and online services subsequently occurred across Russia.
The affected facility is one of Yandex's main data centers, housing tens of thousands of servers. According to Reuters, two of the company's three supercomputers used for AI development are located at this facility. However, it has not been confirmed whether the supercomputers themselves were damaged.
Regarding the perpetrator of the attack, Yandex has not disclosed the origin of the drones. Meanwhile, according to AFP, Andriy Kovalenko, former head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, claimed in a Telegram post that the attack was carried out by the Ukrainian military. This is believed to be the first instance of a data center in Russia being targeted by a drone attack.
